Dustin Kleinschmidt grew up outside the faith in a home shaped by instability and trauma, met Jesus in high school, and fell forward into ministry. Over 25 years he served in nearly every pastoral role student ministry, worship, lead pastor, church planter before stepping away after a long season of burnout.

Out of that wilderness came The Wilderness Way- a book built on a single honest discovery: this life between rescue and full restoration is the wilderness. Not a season to escape. The permanent terrain where beauty and brokenness coexist, and where God is present and forming us all along.

He now writes, and coaches ministry leaders

• Website: dustinkleinschmidt.com
• Book: The Wilderness Way: Finding Freedom in Life's Fractures : https://a.co/d/iXX78qP
• Substack: dustinkleinschmidt.substack.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/dustinkschmidt
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/dustin.kleinschmidt

Welcome to 12-Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Dustin.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Dallas, Texas.

Wonderful.

Born and raised or moved there eventually?

No, born and raised in Los Angeles and moved here, I should say, in 2011 through a job change.

Went and moved from one church to a different church in the Dallas area.

So our family migrated across the country.

Wow, that's a big move though, right?

In terms of culture and Dallas still has that city vibes, but it's a big move, isn't it?

It is.

I mean, in culture, especially like you're saying, like Los Angeles is very, a lot of bustle and hustle.

Very, I guess you could say secular in some ways.

But, and then Dallas and especially the part of Dallas we were in initially is very conservative, very Bible Belt-ish.

And so there was, it was a transition to getting used to the culture here and just kind of the, it was nice because people were nice in a way that they're not nice necessarily in LA.

But it's not necessarily a genuine niceness.

It's sometimes more of a performative niceness.

And so, yeah, you're, so you're kind of like, I would almost trade authenticity and maybe a little more edge.

But yeah, it was a big transition, but we love it.

It feels like home now.

And, you know, there's no shortage of opportunities to engage and love people.

And then we have all the creature comforts that we would have at LA, except for mountains and beaches.

When did you realize the importance of authenticity?

I think I've always kind of had that to a degree.

That's a great question.

I, you know, I grew up in a really broken home and a lot of messiness.

And so I think I always kind of had this, I'd rather just express the elephant in the room and let's figure it out versus trying to pretend or perform or couch my answers.

And it's got a good side and a bad side, right?

Like there's wisdom in holding your tongue.

What's the old proverb, right?

Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

And so there's a sense that there's that, but yeah, authenticity and honesty have always been really, really high values to me in life and in ministry.

You know, even with our kids, we spend a lot of time going like, Hey, it's okay that you messed up.

Just own it.

Just tell me you messed up.

And then we can move forward from there.

Stop trying to dance around it.

Just say, yeah, I messed up.

I'm sorry.

And let's move on.

When you were growing up, did you have that model that was the reason you believed here this work or who was that person that convinced you?

Yeah, this is the way it works.

And it's better to be done this way.

Um, yes, yes and no.

So I did in the sense that my mom's, uh, I grew up with this for the most part.

So I, my stepdad was abusive.

And so my mom and I moved out when I was just about to start middle school.

So it was really just her and I, so I had a single mom for most of my formative adolescence.

And you know, I would buy her father's day cards cause she was working 60 hours a week and taking me to my friend's houses.

And, but I was your very typical eighties latchkey kid.

Like I walked to and from school and made my own breakfast, made my own dinners oftentimes.

So I was very, but my mom's a no nonsense person.

Like she, she definitely is willing to say what she thinks and thinks what she says.

And so I had it modeled from her.

But then when I became a Christian, I also had a small group leader in my high school days, a guy named Steve, who was very much like that.

Like he was not a performative Christian.

Like he was going to say, we were going to talk about struggling with lust.

And we were going to talk about, you know, how hard it is to follow Jesus and what it looks like to have a real quiet time and not pretend and not, you know, say spiritual things, but not live them.

And so I think those two specific examples were people in my life that both on the faith side and just on the everyday life side were really, really focused on helping me to see the value in being aware of yourself and your own tendencies to lie to yourself or to pretend, and then to push against that.

Take me to the time that the first person called you pastor and what that felt like.

I think I said, No, I'm just dusted.

If I remember correctly.

I've always been really uncomfortable with that title.

In multiple reasons.

One, there's probably a little bit of imposter syndrome in there where I feel like I'm kind of still messy sometimes and I make mistakes.

And there's like an aura that that term carries with it.

But I also have come to have a really strong conviction that so in the Bible, the word pastor is a verb every time except for once.

It's only a noun once.

And when it's used as a noun, it's the word poema, which means shepherd.

And it's only used as a noun once.

And that's as a gift given to the church in Ephesians.

I think it's chapter three or four.

And so I don't even know that it's never termed as an office in the Bible and the whole Bible.

And so I have a real discomfort with calling or I understand it in our modern culture, like we need a title.

And so calling someone a pastor means that they're a shepherd.

And so I get that.

But I've always had a tension about that about the idea of like, using that as a as a term of leadership office.

Because Jesus came at it very differently.

He said, you know, whoever wants to be the greatest must be the slave of all.

And so there's this sense of like, a pastor is a servant of all.

He is the one that lowers himself to lift others up.

And so in its natural connotation of like, hey, Pastor Dustin, I've just never loved it.

I just go like, nah, just call me Dustin.

And, you know, I have some gifts and some education and a calling on my life that's that may be unique in some ways, but I'm just a normal dude trying to follow Jesus and trying to help other people follow Jesus.

So yeah, it's always been a tension for me.

I've and I've I accept it.

You know, I don't always have to have this conversation with people because that just gets laborious.

But I do wrestle with it.

I think that, yeah, I just has always been something I've been felt challenged by.

I think it's a good wrestle, though.

I think it's your humility matching with humanity.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Just what it is.

So take me to the wilderness concept, because I've had the opportunity to work with a pastor locally on a book, and he always talks about the upward journey, right?

So yeah, break open this for me.

So you wrote a book, right?

Yes.

It's called The Wilderness Way of Finding Freedom in Life's Fractures.

Open that up for me, please.

I'm curious.

Yeah, it was, I mean, it's born out of my own journey of, you know, being in pastoral ministry for 25 years, and then resigning as a lead pastor, and being completely burned out and, and fried and frustrated.

And what I learned, it's funny, because I stepped out of I resigned thinking that, okay, now I'm going to get some relief, because it was the craziness and busyness of ministry that was wearing me out.

And actually, it was almost the inverse.

Like I actually had never had anxiety or panic attacks until after I resigned from my role.

And so all of a sudden, I find myself in this really an emotional spiral, a depression, anxiety, all these things, and, you know, starting to address them with a counselor.

And what came out of that, ultimately was the book, but the journey was learning one that I had had this kind of subtle quid pro quo with God, where it was like, okay, if I'm faithful, and do what you asked me to, then I will be blessed, quote, unquote, I will get what I want in some way, shape or form.

And so I had taken this role as a lead pastor, this church in a really hard broken church, and really felt like God had called us there.

And so there was a sense of like, okay, it'll we'll find our way to land on our feet, and we never did.

And when I resigned, it was a little bit of like, what the heck, God.

And in that he basically what God began to teach me was, you're good at sharing your disappointments with me.

But I want you to examine your expectations of me.

Because every disappointment is built on an unmet expectation.

And I had had this kind of subtle expectation that God doesn't promise, he never promises that if we're faithful, he's going to give us what we want, or give us what we think we deserve, or that everything's going to work out.

Jesus was the most faithful.

And it didn't work out.

He asked the Father multiple times to take this cut from me, and Father said no.

So that was kind of like the for me, it was the awakening of like, oh, I've been seeing this wrong.

And then in that I was studying the Exodus story.

And you have, you know, the Israelites are rescued from slavery to Egypt.

And then they're told about a promised land.

But then they spend 40 years in the wilderness.

And in the wilderness journey, I started to realize that so much of my life is the wilderness journey.

I've been rescued from slavery to sin and death when I place my faith in Jesus.

And one day I will get a promised land where there will be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more tears.

But this life in many ways is the wilderness, that it will always be a mix of beauty and brokenness, that sometimes you do the right things and things don't go well.

And other times you do the wrong thing, and somehow it works itself out and God is gracious in it.

And you can eat as healthy and exercise all the time and still get cancer.

And so life is, it isn't always, it doesn't always work out the way we hoped and the way we planned.

And life can be really, really difficult.

And rather than going back to my desire to be honest and clear, and just call it how I see it, it really began to free me to go, okay, life can just be a wilderness that in the same day, I can have an amazing time with my wife, we can go out to dinner, and then we can get in a fight later that evening, right, and argue.

And that's part of wilderness, right, that sometimes my brokenness gets on her and her brokenness gets on me.

And, and that's the reality of life.

And yet, in the midst of kind of the fractures and fragments of the brokenness of the world we live in, you know, theologians call it the already but not yet.

But in the midst of all that God is active, and he is present, and he is gracious, and he is loving, and he is leading us.

And he's not forcing us to follow him, but he's calling us to him, he's calling us back to him over and over and over again.

And that's really the heart of the book is that, that life is hard, and it's okay for us to admit it's hard, we don't have to pretend it's not hard.

And we don't just have to paint a verse on it and say, well, God works all things to the good, so it'll figure itself out.

But we can, as the Bible teaches, lament, and grieve.

And at the same time, not grieve like the pagans do, but have hope, because God is with us, and he is leading us and one day, all of it will be restored.

And we will experience the fullness that our heart longs for even now.

Dustin, five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

What's message you'd leave for future you?

The same message that I beat into my skull today, which is Psalm 37, trust in the Lord and do good.

Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Amazing audience, links are in the show notes.

Dustin, a pleasure, I treasure.

Thank you for being on what is inspired by 12 Minute Converse.